Minimalist Parsing of Heavy NP Shift

摘要

This paper studies Heavy NP Shift (HNPS) from the perspective of parsing using Minimalist Grammar. Based on memory usage of the MG parsers, processing difficulties of HNPS as derived by rightward movement, PP movement and remnant movement are each compared with a non-movement structure. A set of complexity metrics show that shifted structures are indeed easier to parse than a non-movement structure when the NP is long.